HUMAN INSTINCTS
   "The difference between men and women is that a woman wants one man to satisfy her every need, and a man wants every woman to satisfy his one need." Playboy’s Party Jokes, November 2009. Most will see the humor intended by this joke, even if they don’t like it being quoted from a chauvinist magazine like Playboy. The human female evolved to nurture the most genetically robust offspring possible. Contrasted with this, the human male is programmed to spread his genes as broadly as he can get away with. Early social mores developed to protect the female in her nurturing role and sent the male out to hunt and protect. It is little wonder with these dramatically different gender traits that modern societies are still grappling with sexual equality. In some communities today’s woman seems to have the best deal, having been accepted in both her biological role and offered social equality. In contrast, the males have diminished roles and their genetic programming to spread their genes is frowned on by church and state. Some feminist organizations even question the need for males in the future of the human race.
   This leads to me to the question: "What are humans without our instincts?" Our instinctual responses to our environment are hard coded into our genome to protect us while we lived in the natural world of our ancestors. So much of current society’s structure is still in response to these instincts. Sports, cosmetics, fashion, laws, computer games, racial tension and fast cars all are based on fundamental instinctual drives. Sex is by far the most visible instinct in the modern world. It pervades everything. Societal responses to the human sexual drive are fundamental to religions, laws, and economies. It continuously impacts our lives on multiple levels.
   With control of our own genome, future architects of ‘purpose built’ humans won’t want the complication of extraneous instincts. If designing a warrior you might like loyalty, fearlessness, and aggression. You would definitely not want compassion, independence, or sexual drive. Lower brain emotions evolved from our animal ancestors. Modern cognitive science and genetics have recently discovered that morality is hard wired into our brain. The fundamental basis of all human behavior is to reproduce and to protect our offspring until they reach reproductive age. The human sexual drive dominates every aspect of modern civilization and it soon will have no purpose! What will it be like? What will the motivations be of future humans? Without our sex drive what happens to the institution of marriage? If woman no longer need men as fathers and neither men nor women are motivated by sex, why would we ever marry? Wirelessly connected in a hive conscious; will our societies be more like those of ants or bees? Popular press wonders what robots will think. I wonder what we modified humans will think.